Chapter 132: The queen
Night fell quickly on the Boneyard Desert. The merciless, white-hot sun sank below the horizon, and the sky turned from a pale, washed-out blue to a deep, star-dusted indigo.
A profound cold seeped out of the white sand, the opposite extreme of the day’s brutal heat.
Rhys stood over the twitching, broken bodies of the Ossian Stalkers. The milky-white fluid that was their blood had already soaked into the sand, leaving dark, sizzling patches on the surface.
He used the tip of his iron sword to flip one of the dead creatures onto its back. The black, sinewy tissue that held its mismatched bones together was still pulsing with a faint, residual energy.
It was not a biological substance. It felt magical, like a kind of living, necromantic glue.
Emma came to stand beside him, her face pale in the moonlight but her expression resolute.
The initial shock of the attack had passed, and she was now looking at the dead creatures with the analytical gaze of a scholar.
She had her mother’s book open, flipping through the pages.
"There is a small entry," she said, her voice a low murmur.
"Under ’Fauna of the Unclaimed Wastes’. It calls them ’Bone Golems’. Constructs of animated bone held together by a necrotic life-force.
It says they are scavengers, but highly territorial and intelligent. The notes mention a hive structure, always led by a single, powerful Matriarch."
"A queen," Rhys said, confirming his own thoughts. He looked out at the vast, empty desert, in the direction the lone survivor had fled.
"The scout has returned to its nest. It will report our strength. The next wave will be much larger. And they will be prepared for us."
Emma looked at him, her green eyes sharp and intelligent. "So we run? We try to outrun them until we reach the Whispering Mire?"
Rhys shook his head. "No," he said, his voice a low, determined rumble.
"We are the prey. They will not stop hunting us. In this desert, they have the advantage. They know the territory. We would be running blind. The best defense is to become the predator."
He looked at her, his pitch-black eyes holding a cold, hard light.
"We rest for a few hours. Then, we follow the tracks of that scout back to its nest. And we kill the queen."
Emma was silent for a moment, processing the audacity of his plan. He was proposing that the two of them, alone, in a hostile and unknown land, should actively seek out and attack the heart of a nest of monstrous creatures.
It was an insane idea. But she had seen him fight. She had seen the impossible power he held. She had seen the cold, calm confidence in his eyes.
She trusted him.
"Alright," she said, giving a single, decisive nod. "We hunt."
They rested for a few hours in the relative safety of the giant ribcage, eating a small, cold meal of dried meat and hard bread from Rhys’s supplies.
The desert at night was a different world. It was cold, silent, and deeply eerie.
The colossal skeletons that littered the landscape cast long, strange shadows in the moonlight, making it seem as if the ancient, dead gods were still watching.
When the moon was high in the sky, they set off. Rhys led the way, his eyes fixed on the ground.
The tracks of the lone Ossian Stalker were faint on the white sand, but to his heightened senses, they were as clear as a paved road.
They walked in silence for hours. The desert was a vast, open space, and they were two small, insignificant figures moving through a graveyard of giants.
The only sound was the soft crunch of their boots on the sand and the low whistle of the wind as it blew through the empty eye sockets of a nearby colossal skull.
Emma, her stamina boosted by another one of Rhys’s pills, walked silently behind him. She was watching him, studying him.
He moved with a quiet, efficient grace, his senses constantly scanning their surroundings. He was a hunter in his natural element.
She was beginning to understand that the quiet, unremarkable outer disciple she had hired was a far more complex and dangerous being than she could have ever imagined.
After what felt like an eternity of walking, Rhys stopped. He held up a hand, his body tense.
"We’re close," he whispered.
He pointed to a massive, half-buried skull ahead of them. It was the one they had seen from the ridge, its jawbone alone the size of a small house.
A large, dark crack in the side of the skull, just below its empty eye socket, was the source of a faint, foul smell, the same corrupt, stagnant odor they had smelled in the ruined city of Silverwood.
The tracks of the scout led directly to that crack. This was the entrance to the nest.
"The entrance will be guarded," Rhys said, his voice a low whisper. "We need to be silent."
He looked at Emma.
"Stay here. If I am not back in one hour, run. Head east as fast as you can. Do not look back."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a sharp look.
"This is not a negotiation. This is the plan. I work better alone."
He did not wait for her to agree. He drew his simple iron sword and, without a sound, he dissolved into the shadows at the base of the giant skull.
He moved with the silent grace of a phantom. He reached the crack in the skull. He peered inside.
It was a dark, sloping tunnel that led deep into the sand beneath the giant bone.
The tunnel was about ten feet high, its walls a strange, pulsating mixture of sand and the same black, sinewy tissue that held the Stalkers together.
He could see two Ossian Stalkers standing guard just inside the entrance.
They were perfectly still, their single red eyes scanning the darkness.
Rhys did not hesitate. He raised his hand, and two small, thin blades of the Twilight Edge formed in his palm.
He flicked his wrist. The two shadow blades shot forward, silent and invisible in the darkness of the tunnel.
Flash. Flash.
Two silent, brilliant bursts of white light lit up the tunnel for a fraction of a second.
The two guards collapsed into inert piles of bone without making a sound.
Rhys slipped into the tunnel. The inside was a network of narrow, twisting passages.
The air was thick with the stench of decay and necrotic energy. He moved deeper into the nest, his senses on high alert. He encountered several more Stalkers on patrol.
He dealt with each of them in the same way: a single, silent Twilight Edge blade, a brilliant flash of light, and a clean, quiet death.
Finally, the narrow tunnel opened into a massive, circular cavern. The cavern was huge, at least three hundred feet across.
The ceiling was a high, domed roof made from the inside of the colossal skull.
The walls were a pulsating, living mass of the black, sinewy tissue, and in the center of the cavern, glowing with a malevolent red light, was the heart of the nest.
It was the Queen.
She was a horrific, massive creature, ten times the size of a normal Stalker. Her body was a chaotic, asymmetrical nightmare, a fusion of hundreds of different skeletons.
He could see the skulls of giant beasts, the ribcages of unknown monsters, and even the small, delicate bones of humanoids, all held together by the thick, pulsating black tissue.
A dozen glowing red eyes, scattered randomly across her body, scanned the cavern.
She was not just a queen. She was a living factory.
Piles of white bones were scattered around her, and she was using long, thin tendrils of her own black sinew to weave them together, creating new Ossian Stalkers.
The Queen sensed him the moment he entered the cavern. A high-pitched, psychic screech echoed in his mind.
All dozen of her red eyes swiveled and fixed on him.
She was a Stage 4 beast.
The Queen moved. Her massive, chaotic body rose up on a dozen mismatched legs, and she charged.
Rhys met her charge. He knew his simple iron sword would be useless against her thick, bony armor.
He poured his Qi into his fists, and the dull, red glow of the Spark Fist appeared.
He dodged her initial, clumsy lunge. He was faster, more agile. He moved under her massive body and punched upwards with all his strength.
The Spark Fist connected with her underbelly. There was a loud boom, and a small, explosive burst of fire blasted a chunk of bone and black tissue from her body.
The Queen let out another psychic screech, this time one of pain. She had been wounded.
She reacted with a surprising speed. She spun around, a massive, club-like tail made from the fused vertebrae of some giant beast swinging towards him.
Rhys jumped back, the tail smashing into the ground where he had been a second before, sending a shower of sand and bone fragments into the air.
The fight had begun. The Queen was a brute, relying on her immense size and strength.
She could also control the loose bones in the cavern, firing sharp shards of bone at him like a storm of deadly arrows.
Rhys was a blur of motion. He dodged and weaved, never staying in one place for more than a second.
His Twilight Edge blades were ineffective against her massive body, so he relied on his Spark Fist. It was a difficult fight.
Every time he managed to land a blow, she would simply pull more bones from the piles around her to repair the damage.
He needed a new strategy. He could not win a battle of attrition. He remembered the black, sinewy tissue.
It was the source of her power, the living glue that held her together. And it had reacted badly to the heat of his Spark Fist.
He found an opening. The Queen reared up, preparing to bring her massive weight down on top of him.
In that moment, he used Low-distance Jump. He appeared on her back, his feet finding a purchase on the chaotic jumble of her bony armor.
He did not use a small, focused Spark Fist. He poured all of his Qi into a single, massive attack.
A large, swirling ball of red, explosive fire formed in his hands.
He slammed it down into the center of her back, at the point where all the major sinews of her body seemed to connect.
The explosion was immense. A massive, fiery bloom of red and orange light filled the cavern.
The Queen let out a final, deafening psychic scream of pure, unadulterated agony. The black, sinewy tissue that held her together was not just damaged; it was incinerated.
Her massive, chaotic body lost all cohesion. It simply... fell apart.
The hundreds of skeletons that had made up her form clattered to the ground in a massive, lifeless pile. The dozen red eyes flickered and died.
Rhys landed softly on the sandy floor of the cavern. He was breathing heavily, his body aching from the strain of the fight. But he had won.
In the center of the massive pile of bones, a single object was glowing with a soft, red light. It was the Queen’s core.
He walked over and picked it up. It was a powerful energy source, far more potent than the cores of the normal Stalkers.
With the Queen dead, all the remaining Ossian Stalkers in the nest, and any that were still roaming the desert, instantly collapsed, their red eyes going dark, their bodies becoming nothing more than inert piles of bone.
He stood in the silent, dead nest, the Queen’s core warm in his hand.
Then looking down, tried to summon the queen. But as his calculations failed. Here he couldn’t summon these creatures a they were already summons of another entity.
The entity beyond the seal.
Anyway their first major threat in the Unclaimed Territories had been eliminated.
He turned and walked back through the silent tunnels, back to his partner, who was waiting for him under the cold, silent light of the moon.